Nag your man ...as it just might save his life!
THERE’S an ailment that’s afflicted far too many men in my family — my father, my husband and, for a long time, my son included. This pernicious condition is not incurable but it can be fatal.
It’s an alarmingly common problem, one symptom of which is that it leaves women like me tearing their hair out. The men in my life have been far too stubborn to see a doctor.
‘I just can’t get Jim/Christopher/ David to see the GP,’ is a common refrain when I meet friends — tales from women coping with impossibly stubborn men who claim their ill health is ‘nothing to worry about’.
It’s true we admire the stoicism, the ‘manliness’ of it all. But there’s a fine line. Are they fearless or feckless? Self-reliant or plain silly?
GPs may complain about the ‘walking well’ crowding surgeries, but the majority are not men.
In the Healthy Ireland Survey 2018, GPs’ consultation rate was 11 per cent lower for men than for women. The survey also found that on average men saw their GP three times a year while women went four times.
One friend was cutting in her summary of the problem: ‘Many men would rather die than make a doctor’s appointment.’
That is not an exaggeration. I know one man — a talented cartoonist and a heavy smoker who, in spite of the most awful cough, and chest problems, would joke about avoiding the doctor as he lit up.
Unfortunately, now he’s being treated for lung cancer. He remains unrepentant, and still rolls his own.
Another avoided seeing a doctor even after tumbling down the stairs and landing on his head on a marble floor, spouting blood. He was patched up at A&E, but refused to go to the GP. It may have been a warning sign of the brain tumour that later killed him.
His bewildered widow to this day feels both angry at his disregard for his own health and guilty that she didn’t push him to go to the doctor.
GUILT often plagues the women caring for these stubborn men. We may hesitate to express anger as it doesn’t seem right if the other person is suffering.
All too often it comes out, as it did with me, during the grieving process, when it can hit suddenly and be emotionally devastating. I heard this expressed years back by journalist Val Hennessy, who got very heated about ‘selfish men who don’t look after themselves, do all the wrong things, then expect women to pick up the pieces’.
It’s the sheer thoughtlessness, the senseless and selfish risk-taking that is so difficult to cope with.
At a certain point, women seem to stop taking risks with their health. For me, when children came along a survival instinct kicked in to protect them. Men, on the other hand, to pluck an example, may even attempt tree surgery without a harness. Unfortunately, I’m familiar with this group of men.
My father, who died from a heart attack at 71, ignored any doctor’s advice about his heart, his weight or his pipe smoking. He denied there was any problem and defiantly went on eating all the wrong things and ignoring my mother’s pleas.
At one point I made him an appointment with my own chest specialist who bluntly told him he was killing himself. This had some impact for about five minutes before he reverted to his old ways, pretending he’d simply never heard it. My late husband Jacques loved natural raw foods and ran regularly. But he was still prone to avoid doctors and self-diagnose. Though a moderate drinker, he would use whiskey to self-medicate for anything from a tooth abscess to insomnia. He loved huge steaks and endless cups of re-heated strong black coffee.
He’d put off dental appointments till he was screaming in agony, and he took far too much aspirin for his back pain.
Before he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 1987 he’d had symptoms for months. One doctor’s visit diagnosed a stomach bug, so he took that as permission to ignore any further developments.
It was only when I glimpsed his wasted muscles that I called the doctor and insisted on a scan. Sadly it was too late.
He had aggressive pancreatic cancer. I’ve since heard of similar cases where early diagnosis saved patients.
My son Elias, until recently, was just as obstinate as his father and grandfather. He dreaded going to the doctor. You’d have to catch him grimacing to know that anything was wrong. ‘I’m fine,’ he’d insist just before a crisis.
I remember him in his 40s, insisting on going to work, white as a sheet and scarcely able to stand. It took a real crisis, a very determined wife, the birth of his daughter and this nagging mother to make him see sense.
His wake-up call happened in 2011. He’d been ignoring a lesion on his thigh and a persistent headache for days.
As an archeological researcher, he greeted guests at the grand opening of a restored park — he knew perfectly well that something was wrong.
In the middle of the night he became terribly ill and was rushed to A&E.
After many weeks in hospital, he emerged much more amenable to seeking help when needed. He learned the hard way — but what should other women do with their GP refuseniks?
Dr Stuart Miller, a former GP, believes encouraging men to talk about their health is a key factor. ‘Women have an emotional willingness to share this kind of information, whereas men aren’t wired to communicate this way,’ he says.
‘Women also seem to be more on the alert for symptoms — perhaps a function of their biological caring role.’
‘We also know men’s health generally is still not discussed as much as women’s. Prostate cancer barely gets a look-in compared to breast cancer, and only a fraction of resources devoted to screening programmes for women are spent on men.’
Of course, no one wants men — or women — rushing to their GPs at the slightest twinge. But when it comes to serious illness, women are the proactive ones while men take risks with their health — and that has to change.
Otherwise it’s not only men who suffer, but also the women and families left with the physical and emotional fallout.